Recruitment Drive: Blue Cross, Blue SHIELD
by Afalstein
Summary: House, still on the run from the authorities, is visiting an old friend at the cemetery when a polite girl with a British accent shows up with a whole new world of possibility. Part of the "Recruitment Drive" series.


**Blue Cross, Blue SHIELD**

* * *

_James Wilson._

_1961-2012_

The stone was simple, drab, and, House couldn't help thinking, incredibly inadequate. A simple dash between two dates for a life spent helping others. No "Beloved Husband," or "Honored Father," Wilson had been single and childless. Apparently monikers like "Trusted Friend," "Friendly Doctor," or "Sanctimonious Do-Gooder" had been out of the question. No "Beloved Son," either—Wilson's parents were probably buried somewhere in the same cemetary. Along with—House let his gaze rove over the stone-dotted hills—probably half the population of the tri-state area. The dead population, anyway.

"Sorry for your loss," said a voice behind him.

House rolled his eyes. "No, you're not." He said, turning. A slim brunette with an anxious expression stood some ten feet behind him at another gravestone. "You're sorry for YOUR loss, and you think commiserating with me will make you feel better. You don't even know what my loss is. I could be visiting my sworn enemy, pissing on his grave, for all you know."

The girl blinked at him. "I don't..." She started.

"Not that it makes much difference." House snorted, walking away from Wilson's grave. "Would be a waste of good piss. Or flowers, if you'd brought any, which clearly you didn't. Or walking, which clearly you did. In any case, coming here is a waste of time. Your..." he leaned over to look at the grave she was standing at, "...Martin Cusack isn't going to be any less dead for all your walk out here."

"He's not..." the girl started.

"Of course, that doesn't really matter, because gravestones and flowers and cemetaries, they're not for the dead. You didn't come out here for dearly departed Martin, you came out here for you." House squinted at the grave. "Wow, that age, must have been your daddy. Except this is America, and that accent of yours is British, so I guess he must have been your sugar daddy." Tilting his head, he arched an eyebrow at the girl. "Do you dig older men? Is that why you were 'sorry' for my loss?"

The girl's face was flaming red. "I never..."

"Well too bad." House gave a mocking shrug. "I mean, gold-digging skanks are kinda hot, but dear Marty over there wasn't nearly old enough to die of natural causes, which means you're either some sort of black widow or Marty contracted syphillis." He paused to pretend to consider. "Unless he picked it up from one of his other honeys. I guess that's more likely. Likelihood goes up the more you sleep around, after all, and..." House paused and frowned at the girl, "...and... you're not... reacting like people usually do when I insult their loved ones."

The girl raised her eyebrows, as if expecting more.

House's eyes went from the grave to the girl and back again. "You didn't come here for you, or Martin Cusak." He said, pointing at her. "You didn't even know Martin Cusak. You came here for me."

The girl gave a nervous little smile. "Agent Jemma Simmons." She said brightly, flashing a badge. "Of SHIELD."

* * *

"We're not here to arrest you, Dr. House." Agent Simmons said about twenty minutes later, as a tall strapping black man who'd come out of nowhere forced him into a diner booth. "Far from it, we want your expert opinion on something."

"Suppose I don't want to give it." House suggested.

"Er..." Simmons didn't seem prepared for that.

"Then we drop your lame ass off at the sheriff's down the road and you get to spend the next couple of years discovering prison life." The man answered, dropping into the booth behind them and looming over the divider to glare at them. "Spoiler: It's unpleasant."

"I suppose you would know." House sneered. The man just smiled, so he turned his attention back to the girl. "If you want me to use my tongue, you'd better at least buy me dinner first."

"Of course." The girl nodded brightly, then frowned at the man behind him. "Tripp? Is something wrong? No? Then what would you like, Dr. House?"

"A hamburger." House said, patronizingly.

A hamburger was sent for, and a few moments later, House was digging into a juicy half-pound burger, with Tripp looming over his shoulder and Simmons quickly reviewing facts.

"The patient is a young 20-something male, caucasian." Simmons said. "He experienced extreme oxygen deprivation which, he only barely survived, and is currently in a vegetative state."

House looked up from his meal. "Do you think I could get them to recook this hamburger? It's practically bleeding. Probably all sorts of e-coli wriggling around in there."

Tripp jabbed him in the arm. "Hey. Listen to the lady."

"His... condition is the result of saving a woman from a downed... submersible." Simmons continued. "Since the incident, he's been kept on life support with constant monitors following and recording the slightest flicker of brain activity. His lower level functions are mostly intact, and he seems capable of recognizing visitors..."

"Then he's not in a vegetative state." House interrupted. "Vegetables don't recognize visitors. Did you say he was to invoke pity or do you have unsound expectations of vegetables?"

Simmons flushed. Tripp growled.

"Similarly the whole 'saving a woman from drowning.'" House continued, picking the seeds off his hamburger. "Doesn't matter how his brain lost oxygen, it could have lost it drowning a kitten for all the difference it makes."

"He's a friend..." Simmons started.

House snorted. "Of course he is. Hundreds of brain-dead people in the world. You're not here asking for my 'expert opinion' on the father of seven or some humanitarian. You're wasting your resources on some boy-toy."

"Here." House snatched the folder from her fingers. "How about a game of 'let's pretend?' Let's pretend I care about this case, and let's pretend you're not wasting my time, and let's pretend chocolate thunder back here doesn't want to stick it in you." Tripp cuffed him on the head but he ignored it, making a show of flipping through the file. "Okay, this is a phone-book of worthless information. The only graph that really makes any difference is this." He brought up a MRI scan of the brain. "Zero activity. Zero neurons. Given your feelings on vegetables I understand you're a really shitty doctor, so I'll break it down into simple forms. This," jabbing a finger at the brain scan, "is a three-pound lump of slowly rotting meat. It might twitch every so often, but that doesn't make it alive. It's dead and it's staying dead." He dropped the file back onto the table. "There. Expert opinion. Happy?"

"No." Simmons gave a defined shake of her head. "You're one of the most brilliant doctors in the business, there must be something..."

"Not 'one of the most,' I AM the most." House rolled his eyes. "And you just tracked me down to give a diagnosis the crudest pre-med student out of Boonesville could give you."

"Not just a diagnosis, a job." Simmons stated firmly. "I want you to come back to SHIELD with me. Work on this man's brain..."

"The only 'work' I could do on that man's brain is to take it apart to see how it worked." House said. "Dead is dead. Did you get your science out of Frankenstein? If I was able to cure brain death, I'd be kicking it on yacht in the Bahamas with twenty bitches on either arm." He shrugged. "I can diagnose weird diseases. I can think up unusual fixes to unusual problems. But this..." he gestured at the brain again. "...this is just boring. Like cancer." His mouth gave a bitter twist. "There's no cure for this."

"But there are treatments." Simmons insisted. "We have equipment, resources you can't imagine. Surely there must be something..."

House sighed. "Look. This retarded boy-toy of yours. You used to have sex with him?"

The british girl blushed bright red. "Oh my goodnessNO why would you even... I mean we never..."

"But you WANT to have sex with him." House cocked his head. "You were probably planning on having sex with him before the accident. You realize you don't really need brain activity for that. You can induce an erection artificially. They have devices..."

"That's NOT what this is about!"

"Of course that's what this is about." House rolled his eyes. "That's what it's always about. But it doesn't matter. Dead is dead, or in this case, retarded is retarded. There's nothing you can do about it."

"Nothing?" The girl was watching him.

House pretended to think. "I suppose..." He murmured.

"Yes?" Simmons leaned forward eagerly.

"...maybe... if you wish really really hard with all your heart, some fairy dust might puff out of nowhere and cure him." House grinned, ignoring the cuff on his head, and grabbed his cane. "Your boyfriend's functionally dead. Get over it." He got up from the table.

He looked at the girl, who seemed crushed, hunched over the table and her pile of useless graphs. He looked at the black man, who seemed fit to murder him but was making no move to block his exit.

He looked at the girl again and rolled his eyes. "Oh, get over it," he muttered, hobbling toward the door. "Everybody dies."

"I know two people who didn't."

It was practically a whisper, and too incredibly ridiculous to be true, but House nonetheless stopped and turned.

The girl slowly raised her head. "I know two people—I work with them—who died and came back. I watched one expire in my care and ten minutes later she was walking around again." Her hand brought another file from the table. "And there are more."

House studied her a long moment. She was making it up. She had to be making it up. Or she was delusional, with shoddy medicine convincing her of impossible happenings.

But he couldn't help it. He reached out and took the file.

"That's just the surface," the girl said, as he flipped through the file. "Just one instance. SHIELD works with fringe cases—bizarre new diseases and physiologies, electric viruses, aliens, gods—we cure diseases they haven't named yet."

House slowly limped back to his seat. He said nothing.

"It's life on the edge." The girl gave almost curiously dark smile. "It's work where every case is interesting and every diagnosis is new."

"Except your boyfriend. He's still as boringly brain-dead as ever." House could not resist another shot.

"Fix my 'boyfriend' and I'll fix your leg." Simmons smiled triumphantly as House's head shot up.

"Simmons..." The dark man said warningly.

"If we can fit Root with an eyeball and offer Finch a cybernetic spine, we can spare a deathlok leg or two." Simmons bit back, with surprising fire. "I've studied them. I know how to make them work." She looked back at House, eyes blazing. "Make him think again, and I'll make you walk again."

House snorted. "Can I have a pretty pink unicorn too?"

"If you're into that sort of thing." Simmons shrugged.

For a long moment, House studied her. Occasionally he glanced down at the file and its odd, inexplicable graphs.

Finally he shrugged and snapped the folder shut. "Being a fugitive was getting boring anyway."

* * *

**A/N:** Of course, technically House is still a fugitive now, just a fugitive among a gang of the most wanted fugitives in the world.

This is an odd little Recruitment Drive story, not in line with the usual spy dramas that I'm crossing over with. But in another sense, it fits perfectly. I'm pretty sure Season 2 Simmons is going to be frantically searching for a cure for Fitz, with Tripp trying to be supportive even as he wishes she'd get past him-a dynamic I tried to convey here. With all the recruiting going on, I can see Simmons going on her own private project-finding a doctor to help her bring Fitz back. And who better than a fugitive genius doctor?

And actually House is a perfect fit for SHIELD. Aside from the artificial legs, he's all about the interesting cases, the weird and unusual-which is totally SHIELD's gig. Plus, his rudeness contrasted with Simmons ultra-politeness so well.


End file.
